Robert Osborne, Late Friend of a Friend

Robert Osborne, main host of the cable, we-have-no-commercials, classic movie station Turner Classic Movies (TCM), passed away last week. I didn't know him, but he was a good friend to Richard DeNeut, my friend and client, who died just over a year ago.

My wife and I began watching Robert (his good friends I am sure called him Bob) on TCM in the mid-90s, soon after the station began and the exact time we bought our first color television set. He was a refreshing host--knowledgeable, a good interviewer, and correct in what he said the vast majority of the time. His questions to an actor or actress he interviewed were never gushy, never superficial and never overly deep or complex. He had been an actor and a journalist and knew a lot about films.

I remember his opposite, a university film professor interviewing Gene Kelly, the actor-dancer-director on a public television show about movies. The man told him a story of how Kelly went on performing a particular movie until his feet were bleeding. Kelly listened to him stone-faced and then said, simply, "That's apocryphal."

Robert Osborne had a winning way of talking with these movie stars and never to them: Betty Hutton, Charlton Heston, Tony Curtis, Alice Faye and Mother Dolores Hart, who left movie stardom in 1963 and joined the cloistered abbey, the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Connecticut.

Dick, an old friend of Mother Dolores too, co-wrote her autobiography. I was their attorney. His is friendship with Robert at least got his foot in the door to arrange for Robert to interview Mother Dolores to help promote the book. He was gracious and at ease with her and she with him. She was the "guest programmer" for the night and they watched and discussed "The Song of Bernadette," "Lisa," in which she starred with Stephen Boyd, and "The Rose Tattoo," starring her "Wild Is the Wind" co-star Anna Magnani.

I never met Robert Osborne, but I told Mother Dolores and Dick about my one tangential connection. TCM showed "Where the Boys Are" 10 years ago. Dolores Hart was one of its stars, three years before she left the movies. The alternate host to Robert said something like, most of the movie's stars went on to better things except for Dolores Hart who became a nun and joined a convent, although it is unlikely she engaged in "wet habit" contests there. My wife's Mom, Adelaide Emken Curren, was so upset at this disrespect that she had me write TCM and say, "What do you mean she didn't go on to better things!" I got a form letter back thanking me for my message. Two weeks later, TCM showed "Where the Boys Are" again and Osborne was the host. While he didn't apologize for what the other host had said, he spoke with obvious respect and appreciation for Mother Dolores' work and what she is doing now. He was a very gracious fellow indeed and will be missed.

Copyright 2017 by John T. Aquino